The Incredible Shrinking Superpower

Worried about the high cost of filling up? President Bush is on the case. Last Friday he arrived in Riyadh to urge King Abdullah, the leader of the world’s largest petroleum producer, Saudi Arabia, to put more oil on the market.

At the sun-bleached airport, Bush was greeted with the Gulf’s signature mix of garish oil wealth and tinpot amateurism. A large retinue of royalty watched as a band played an off-key version of the U.S. national anthem. Bush walked through the cavernous air terminal to his motorcade and drove to the monarch’s “farm” at al Janadriyah. Through the enormous gates and along alleys of dying shrubs and trees fed by miles of futile drip hoses, he made his way to the King’s “villa,” a marble-clad, poured concrete palace. Through a foyer with a statue of a cheetah felling an antelope and anterooms full of attendants, Bush strolled deep into Abdullah’s inner sanctum, past the portly King’s private exercise pool, his Stair-Master and his “Vibromass” anti-cellulite belt-massager, to his personal study, where a console of 24 small TVs filled one wall and two overstuffed chairs coddled the leaders.


It was there, after much pomp and circumstance, that Bush made his request. And it was there that the King still said no.

That was the sum result, anyway, of Bush’s efforts to ease your gas bills on his visit to Saudi Arabia. In fact, Bush didn’t do much better on the rest of his five-day trip to the region. Oil prices aren’t the only issue America faces in the Middle East; they may not even be the most important. The Iranian regime is busy gaining the ability to build a nuclear weapon. Bush made no progress convincing allies to pressure it to change course. Iran is also arming and training anti-Israeli forces in Gaza and Lebanon. Instead of backing down, those groups stepped up attacks on America’s allies before and during Bush’s trip. Even the nominal purpose of the trip, bolstering Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, produced no progress, unless progress includes the inauguration of a general election battle between Bush and Barack Obama over national security.

Time